Dark Domination (Bought By the Billionaire Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  All Rights Reserved

  About the Book

  Dedicated to M.F. my partner in crime.

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  Acknowledgements

  Tell Lili your favorite part!

  About the Author

  Also By Lili Valente

  Dark Domination

  Bought by the Billionaire

  Book One

  By Lili Valente

  All Rights Reserved

  Copyright Dark Domination © 2015 Lili Valente

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. This erotic romance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with, especially if you enjoy hot, sexy, emotional novels featuring Dominant alpha males. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work. Cover design by Bootstrap Designs. Editorial services provided by Leone Editorial.

  About the Book

  Marine turned billionaire arms dealer Jackson Hawke has one goal—to have the woman who ruined his life at his mercy. He’ll see her on her knees, even if he has to pay for the privilege.

  Six years ago, Hannah buried her twin sister. Now, with her family in jeopardy, Hannah must sell herself to a wealthy stranger in order to save their home.

  She expects to be scarred by the experience. She doesn’t expect to pay penance for her sister’s sins or to meet a man who brings her body savagely to life.

  Now Hannah must choose—confess to Jackson that she’s not the twin he’s looking for and forfeit the money she needs to survive, or submit to a man whose dark domination may be the end of them both.

  * *Dark Domination is the 1st in the Bought by the Billionaire serial romance series. The entire series will release summer 2015* *

  Dedicated to M.F. my partner in crime.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Hannah

  “Keep the door locked, Hannah, and don’t go outside.” Her sister, Harley, dug her fingers into the soft flesh of Hannah’s upper arms, the arms she could never keep as toned as her twin’s, no matter how often she hit the gym. “No one can know you’re here. Do you understand me? No one.”

  “I get it,” Hannah said for the third time.

  “Even if the hall is full of starving orphans,” Harley insisted, her blue eyes hard and focused. “Even if there’s a nun out there with her pants on fire, you keep the door closed and your mouth shut. Get me?”

  “But nuns don’t wear pants.” Hannah winked, trying to ease the tension that had festered in the air since she’d surprised Harley at work this afternoon.

  But her sister’s perfectly sculpted brows only drew closer together. “I’m serious, Moo. You know I love you, but if you screw this up for me, I’m going to lose it.”

  “Screw what up?” Hannah asked, dread whispering through her chest.

  Harley’s schemes were never good news. Her twin’s flair for the dramatic had taken a dark, twisted turn that summer ten years ago when their family had fractured down the middle. Afterward, their mother had been the one most obviously damaged, but something in Harley had been broken, too.

  Since then, her sister never seemed to know when she’d gone too far, or care if people were caught in the crossfire.

  “What’s going on?” Hannah pressed. “Is this why you’ve been pushing me away all summer?”

  “I haven’t been pushing you away,” Harley lied, not even bothering to do it convincingly. When Harley was in top form, she could make you believe that the sky was green and the grass was blue.

  But she didn’t bother turning on the charm for family. She saved that for the art dealers who purchased her sculptures, the wealthy lovers she played against each other like pieces in increasingly heartbreaking games of chess, and the unlucky victims slated to pay for wronging her.

  It didn’t matter if the sin was real or imagined or if Harley realized halfway through crafting her blueprint for revenge that the punishment she’d conceived for her target didn’t fit the crime. She never shifted direction or altered course. Hannah was the second guesser, the person who could always see both sides of a story. Harley was simply…inexorable.

  Sometimes, it made Hannah wonder if she had absorbed her twin’s share of empathy in the womb.

  Sometimes it simply scared the hell out of her.

  “Don’t go.” Hannah mirrored her sister’s stance, gripping Harley’s arms, but her touch remained gentle. It was her blessing and her curse, her inability to be as tough and pitiless as her father wanted his daughters to be. “Stay with me. Let’s make popcorn and watch Pretty Woman and pretend it’s the end of another perfect summer. Like when we were kids.”

  “It is the end of a perfect summer.” Harley’s smile was sharp to the touch. “The most perfect summer ever.”

  She leaned in, pressing an impulsive kiss to Hannah’s cheek. “I love you, Moo. And I’m never going to let anyone get away with hurting you or Mom again. Okay? Just stay inside, quiet as a mouse, and everything will be fine.”

  Hannah’s stomach clenched. “Harley, please, I’ve got a bad feeling.”

  “You’ve always got a bad feeling, worry wart.” She pulled away with a laugh, reaching for the black handbag on the polished table by the apartment’s front door.

  The apartment Harley had chosen for her summer on the Virginia shore was uncharacteristically modest, but her purse still cost a few thousand dollars. When Hannah had left for college at Duke, she had adjusted her wardrobe to fit in with the other undergraduate students in her psychology program, gratefully abandoning thousand dollar dresses for blue jeans and tee shirts. But Harley’s taste had only grown more extravagant.

  Her twin was making a killing in the art world, had sweet-talked their father into granting her access to her trust fund two years early, and was always getting gifts from her endlessly shifting assortment of suitors. She was never short on money, which was another reason the modest apartment, the summer job serving drinks at a restaurant by the beach, and the beat up VW Bug Hannah had seen parked in her sister’s space in the parking lot below made no sense.

  Add in the tip envelope with “Harley Garrett” printed on the outside that Harley had tucked into her purse before hustling Hannah out of the bar this afternoon, and there was no doubt that Harley was up to something. Why else would she be using a fake last name?

  But Hannah knew from experience her twin wouldn’t share a word about her latest scheme until it was a fait a
ccompli. Her sister was as superstitious as she was fearless. She wouldn’t risk jinxing a plan by whispering a word about her hoped for outcome until the deed was done and the bodies were buried.

  “There’s leftover rice and Thai curry in the fridge,” Harley said, checking her makeup in the mirror by the door, brushing away an invisible lipstick smear at the corner of her full mouth. “Feel free to have that or any of the stuff in the freezer, but don’t order anything to be delivered. Once I leave, this door doesn’t open until I get home tomorrow morning, not even for the pizza guy.”

  “I get it,” Hannah said, irritation creeping in to singe the edges of her dread. “But we’re going to talk when you get back. A real talk.”

  She’d driven six hours to spend the weekend with her sister and she wasn’t going to spend her last few days of freedom before graduate school locked up in Harley’s apartment, hiding from the world.

  “And we’re going to the beach,” she added, glancing down at her pale, spent-the-summer-in-the-library arms. “I need some sun.”

  Harley’s gaze shifted, meeting Hannah’s in the glass before flicking back to her own reflection. The eye contact only lasted a moment, but it was long enough for Hannah to be certain the next words out of Harley’s mouth were going to be a lie.

  “Okay. We’ll go to the beach and talk. I promise.” She turned, pulling Hannah in for a quick hug. “Never ever, Moo.”

  “Never ever,” Hannah mumbled into her sister’s silky brown hair before Harley slipped out the door. She couldn’t help repeating the familiar phrase, no matter how frustrated she was with her twin.

  Never ever was what they had said to each other since they were little girls. It meant more than I love you. It meant I never ever want to be apart, I never ever want to wake up to a day without you in it, I never ever want to be as close to anyone in the world as I am to you, my sister, my best friend, my other half.

  But they hadn’t been that close in years and lately, when Hannah thought of her sister, it was with an ache in her chest and a hollow feeling in her gut. She knew from her psychology classes that twins often had a slower, more difficult individuation process than normal siblings. It was just harder for “we” to become “me and you” when you’ve spent your entire life as one half of a matched set. But what was happening between her and Harley was about more than growing up. They were growing apart, becoming such different people that she could look down the road and see incredible pain in their future.

  There would come a day when she wouldn’t be able to forgive Harley for something she’d done. A day when her sister would go too far and become someone she couldn’t trust, maybe even someone she was ashamed of. Hannah had a big heart and a forgiving spirit, but even she had hard limits, lines in the sand that, once crossed, could never be uncrossed.

  Later, after a supper of leftovers and a few mindless hours passed in front of the television, Hannah lay in her sister’s bed, staring at the ceiling in the dark, thinking about those lines.

  She didn’t want to believe Harley would hurt innocent people, but as the years passed, her twin reminded her more of their any-means-to-an-end father than their sweet Aunt Sybil—the woman they’d both sworn they wanted to take after when they were girls.

  They’d been eleven years old the first time they’d gone to stay with Sybil for the summer, desperate for a woman to look up to, a woman who wasn’t broken and sad like their mother or cold and efficient like Nanny Hammond or the night nurses who had sat watch outside their bedroom since they were infants. Sybil struggled with severe arthritis and other health problems, but she was always upbeat, excited to greet the day, and eager to spread light around her corner of the world. She exuded a quiet strength and was unfailingly kind.

  If there was one thing Hannah never wanted to fail at, it was kindness.

  But when did kindness become weakness? More importantly, when did her love for and support of her sister make her an accomplice, culpable for the suffering of the people caught in Harley’s warpath?

  She didn’t know, but she knew she and Harley were going to have a real talk tomorrow morning. It was time for Hannah to make it clear that while her love was unconditional, her friendship and support were not. If Harley couldn’t assure her that she was keeping her hands clean, then the next time her sister called in the middle of the night, needing someone to talk her down from her latest anxiety attack or assure her that everything was going to be okay, Hannah wouldn’t pick up the phone.

  Sometimes, anxiety isn’t meant to be banished by a gentle voice in the darkness. Sometimes, anxiety is the soul’s way of telling the body that there are dangerous choices being made, choices that could lead to pain, suffering, and destruction of the most beautiful things in your life.

  Hannah drifted off to sleep battling her own anxious thoughts and didn’t expect to sleep well. Even after four years of living in single dorms and tiny rooms in apartments she shared with friends, she still had trouble drifting off without her sister’s body close to hers. They’d slept in the same bed from the time they were born until the autumn Hannah left for college and Harley headed to New York City to set the art world on fire.

  Hannah’s high school boyfriend had thought the single queen bed in their shared room was strange and Harley’s boys of the moment had usually thought it was sexy—no doubt imagining what it would be like to be sandwiched in between the Mason twins while they did something more than sleep—but Harley and Hannah hadn’t cared what anyone else had thought. They simply rested more peacefully when they were close enough to feel each other’s body heat, to hear the soothing sound of another heartbeat, another indrawn breath, another exhalation through softly parted lips.

  Maybe it was the familiar smell of her sister’s almond lotion lingering in the air that soothed Hannah into a deep sleep, or maybe it was the gentle patter of the rain on the roof that began to fall around nine thirty.

  Whatever it was, Hannah was far past the REM phase, drifting in the slow, sticky waves of delta rest when she was suddenly wrenched awake by the feeling of a heavy body settling on top of her in the darkness and a huge hand covering her mouth.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Hannah

  Hannah’s eyes flew open and her lips parted in a scream, but the enormous man straddling her pressed his hand tighter to her lips, muffling the sound.

  She jerked her arms downward, ready to fight him off, only to discover that her wrists were tied to the headboard. Terror rushed through her and her pulse sped, setting her heart to slamming against her ribs as she tugged harder on her bonds. But the rope biting into her wrists assured her she wouldn’t be able to fight her way free.

  She was bound tight, powerless to protect herself from whatever this man intended to do to her.

  “Relax, princess. It’s just me.” The man leaned down, the water dripping from the end of his nose, landing on Hannah’s cheek, making her flinch. “I came in through the window. I thought I’d make that fantasy you were telling me about a reality.”

  Hannah swallowed, her thundering heartbeat slowing a bit as she understood what was happening.

  She wasn’t being attacked by an intruder. This man must be Harley’s guy of the moment, and he clearly thought he was straddling her sister. Once she cleared up the misunderstanding, he’d untie her and she could show him to the door. They’d both be embarrassed, no doubt, but she wasn’t about to be raped or murdered.

  The realization made her whip-tight muscles sag with relief, an action she realized too late that the man took as an invitation to continue living out Harley’s bondage fantasy.

  “I’ve been dying to touch you all day,” he said, his dry palm moving from her mouth to her breast, teasing her nipple through her thin tee shirt, drawing a gasp from her throat.

  She expected his touch to feel foreign and unwelcome, but his fingers were gentle, teasing her with a sweetness that made her arch into his warm hand. Electricity shot from her breast to coil between her legs, the sensation int
ensified by the feel of the rope digging into her wrists as her biceps tightened reflexively in response to the stranger’s confident touch.

  “God, the sounds you make drive me crazy,” the man said, pinching her nipple tight enough to make her gasp again.

  “No, please, I’m not—” Hannah’s words ended in a moan as he pushed her shirt up and bent lower, tugging her nipple into the warm, wet heat of his mouth. His tongue flicked and teased, flooding her body with pleasure and longing so intense she was panting by the time he transferred his mouth to her other breast, sucking and nibbling at the aroused skin as his big hand slipped down the front of her panties, finding where she was already wet.

  Wet, from her sister’s boyfriend’s mouth on her breasts. And now his fingers were sliding into where she ached, making her shudder.

  If she didn’t stop this soon, it would be too late. There would be no avoiding tragedy, there would be only shame and the nightmare of confessing to her sister and this innocent man that she’d done something unforgivable.

  “Stop, I’m not Harley.” She tensed her thighs only to relax them a second later when she realized her locked muscles were trapping his fingers inside her embarrassingly slick sex.

  “No, you’re not,” he said, driving his fingers in and out of her as he trapped her nipple between his teeth and bit down, making her cry out in pain before he soothed away the hurt with his tongue.

  “You’re my little slut,” he continued in his deep, sexy rumble of a voice, his fingers still busy between her legs, making the tension coiling low in her body fist even tighter. “And I’m going to fuck you until you scream.”

  “No, please,” Hannah said, excitement and fear dumping into her bloodstream simultaneously, making her feel like she was being deliciously, torturously torn in two. “I’m not Harley, I’m—”